OTTAWA — A fake citizenship ceremony broadcast last fall on Sun News was the result of “logistical problems,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Thursday in the House of Commons, amid much laughter.

Under fire during question period after departmental emails detailing the hoax surfaced, Kenney ignored opposition requests to apologize for the ruse, blamed it on public servants in his department and urged Canadians to look past it.

“The department organizes dozens of special citizenship and reaffirmation ceremonies every year which, I think, are a great way of highlighting the value of Canadian citizenship,” he said, noting he only caught wind of the incident this week.

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“It turns out in the ceremony in question . . . some of the people invited didn’t arrive. I think the response to that was poorly handled. I regret that, but we shouldn’t allow it to undermine the important value of these special citizenship and reaffirmation ceremonies.”

According to the emails, released under access to information laws, Sun Media wanted to hold a short ceremony that involved just the citizenship oath and a maximum of 10 people in its small studio as part of Citizenship Week last October.

Government officials cautioned such events were only conducted in exceptional circumstances as citizenship ceremonies are very “special” for those involved and should take place in the company of friends and family.

Officials suggested the broadcaster attend one of 13 already scheduled off-site ceremonies but the network rejected the idea.

“Let’s do it. We can fake the oath,” said a Sun staffer whose name was blacked out.

Bureaucrats instead pitched a reaffirmation ceremony, but had trouble tracking down new immigrants to take part as many indicated they couldn’t take time off work.

In the end, six federal bureaucrats were asked by the department to stand in “so that we’d have the right numbers,” according to one email.

Footage from the event, however, shows the broadcaster ended up passing off the reaffirmation as a true citizenship ceremony.

“What the minister should have done is tell any news outlet that wants to fake a story to go jump in a fake lake,” NDP immigration critic Don Davies retorted following Kenney’s response in a reference to the controversial, $57,000 fake lake prop purchased for the G8 Summit in Muskoka in 2010.

“Instead they played along, once again putting Conservative photo ops ahead of getting things done for Canadians,” the Opposition MP said.

Earlier, Davies called for a mea culpa and apology from Kenney which the Liberals echoed during question period.

He suggested the minister was a hypocrite for cracking down on “bogus refugees” only to take part in a “bogus” citizenship ceremony.

“There were something like 13 legitimate ceremonies in Ontario at that time and all the minister of immigration had to do is direct Sun Media to attend one of those legitimate ceremonies for legitimate footage and the minister didn’t do that,” he said.

“Even worse, he stood idly by while media put out a misleading and deceptive piece that misrepresented people in the story.”

While Kenney didn’t apologize publicly, one of his staffers appeared on Sun News Thursday morning to offer an apology to the network.

“We’re very apologetic and very sorry that this happened,” Candice Malcolm told Sun Media host Pat Bolland. “It shouldn’t have happened and it won’t happen again.”

Acknowledging that both the government and the network had “a little bit of egg on our face,” Bolland assured he was unaware of the situation when he co-hosted the show that featured the ceremony back in October.

While citizenship judge Aris Babikian referred to the event correctly as a “reaffirmation ceremony” during the Oct. 19 broadcast, Bolland noted the new Canadians in studio were among 4,700 people “enjoying the special honour of becoming citizens.”

Meanwhile his co-host, Alex Pierson, kicked things off with the proclamation: “Ten new Canadians are taking their oath right now in our Sun News studio.”

By Thursday afternoon, Sun News began biting back, with host Krista Erickson calling the story a “drive-by smearing.”

She called the story “extremely misleading” and a “completely unfair attack” on the Sun News hosts.

Erickson didn’t say what was wrong about the story, but warned that the network’s hosts were preparing to take on every fact in the story.

“I hope those in Ottawa watching have flak jackets on them,” she said.

The mini-scandal led to widespread condemnation and ridicule of both the government and the broadcaster on Twitter Thursday.

The CBC’s Peter Mansbridge, whose network has been a target of attack by both the government and Sun News, was among the first to weigh in.

“The real ‘state broadcaster’ stands up,” he tweeted.

Another Twitter user asked: “Will (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) apologize for allowing a citizenship ceremony to be so degraded by fed bureaucrats and Sun News?”

“I can only imagine the reaction from Sun News if the CBC had faked a citizenship oath with fake new Canadians on television,” said another.

While the emails suggested bureaucrats tried to inform the minister and pleaded with him to back out, another Kenney staffer took to Twitter to lay blame.

“CIC civil servants did not tell Sun that some of the people at ceremony were CIC staff, they did not tell us either. We wish they had,” Kasra Nejatian tweeted.

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